AUSTIN -- Government's not so bad when it's just deciding on those
special-interest fights -- some titanic clash for turf between doctors and
chiropractors or AT&T vs. Southwestern Bell. True, the side that makes the
biggest political contributions almost always wins, so the rest of us
frequently end up paying higher prices for whatever it is, but at least
we're only getting shot down indirectly.
What's really sickening is when it's a choice involving our health, our air
or our water, and the special interests still win because they make bigger
contributions than we do. When lawmakers (Our Elected Representatives) are
perfectly willing to sacrifice us -- literally our bodies -- in favor of
campaign contributions, it's enough to gag a maggot.
Unfortunately, such cases are rarely crystal clear; and the clearer the
case is, the more high-paid lobbyists you get wandering around making it as
unclear as possible. Here's an interesting example of a fight between clean
air and clean water and the ethanol lobby.
Ten years ago, the feds required that gasoline sold in polluted urban areas
include oxygen, on the theory that oxygen in gas would cut carbon monoxide
emissions. Actually, it doesn't seem to work, but that's not what the
fight's about.
The oil companies met the oxygen requirement in one of two ways. One was to
add a substance called MTBE, which makes people sick in the short run and
also turns out to be a carcinogen. It also has the nasty property of quickly
polluting ground water. It's gotten into wells and water supplies,
particularly in California and the Northeast, where it's most commonly used.
It also makes the water smell and taste bad, and in water-short Southern
California, thousands of wells have been shut down.
OK, MTBE has got to go. Congress is on the program.
The fight is over whether to get rid of this oxygen-in-gasoline requirement
entirely, since it's apparently doing squat to improve air pollution. Ah,
but the second additive used to meet the requirement is ethanol, dear to the
hearts of corn farmers and their representatives in Congress.
And not just corn-staters, because ethanol -- as all of you who listen to
the eco-porn on the Sunday morning chat shows well know -- is the particular
baby of the Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. ADM produces 40 percent of the
ethanol in this country, and as you may also know, ADM makes big, big
political contributions. The annual fight over the ethanol subsidy is always
a doozy, and ADM always wins.
Requiring states to substitute ethanol for MTBE would increase demand for
corn by 600 million bushels and push up corn prices, making the corn farmers
and ADM very happy indeed.
One problem with substituting ethanol for MTBE is that it will increase the
cost of gasoline significantly on both coasts because of shipping costs from
the Midwest. The second problem is that it could actually make air pollution
worse.
According to the EPA, ethanol tends to evaporate easily in warm weather,
thus causing more ozone, thus causing more smog. In a city like Los Angeles,
where pollution is always worst in the summertime, this is not going to
help.
Sens. Tom Daschle and Richard Lugar, corn-staters, have introduced a bill
that would delete the oxygen requirement and substitute a requirement for
"renewable fuels" (to wit, ethanol), but ethanol would be burned mostly in
the farm states where it is produced and mostly in the wintertime, when its
tendency to evaporate is not a problem.
The bill would set a floor on ethanol consumption of 1.3 percent of the
national gasoline supply, just where it is now, but would drop geographic
quotas and time-of-year requirements.
This is a pro-ethanol compromise that would probably mean that, in
California and the Northeast, the oxygen requirement will go by the boards,
but more ethanol will be used in the Midwest. Are the corn farmers happy?
Nope -- some of them are pushing to keep the oxygen requirement so that
everybody will have to use their product. Bet on the biggest contributors.
Here's another nasty example of how campaign contributions make our lives
less pleasant, if not shorter. The Federal Communications Commission was
fixing to open up the broadcast spectrum to hundreds of low-power FM radio
stations. These micro radio stations can only cover a couple of miles at
most and would be used by churches, community groups, Bulgarian speakers and
the like.
And guess who's unhappy about this? The National Association of
Broadcasters, one of the mightiest lobbies in the country. The NAB has been
going around claiming that the low-power stations would interfere with their
high-watt stations -- a dubious claim. The FCC and independent studies show
no such interference.
You may recall the infamous telecommunications bill of 1996 that set off
this ungodly concentration of media ownership. Well, it worked in radio,
too -- the commercial giants have been fighting the FCC all the way. The
only thing that low-power will interfere with is profits, draining away a
tiny minority of listeners who aren't all that crazy about Rush Limbaugh,
Dr. Laura and Nashville country.
National Public Radio (finks, traitors) has joined the NAB in this effort
to shut off more, if tiny, media voices. If you don't think this is a
problem, you haven't been paying attention to the concentration of ownership
in the media. Any independent voice we can get will help.
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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